


between your eyes and you

by from



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Crossdressing, Friendship/Love, M/M, Mirror Sex, Oral Sex, Post-Zayn One Direction, RPF, Touring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-18 20:52:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4720058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/from/pseuds/from
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Fashion doesn’t really exist for Niall, but he always knows what Harry means.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	between your eyes and you

**Author's Note:**

> thank you very much [ohhollandhoney](http://ohhollandhoney.tumblr.com) for the beta & picking <3
> 
> the title of this piece of fiction comes from elizabeth bishop's _to be written on the mirror in whitewash_

The black Herve Leger is snug around his ribcage and the bumps above his hips, but in the floor-length mirror the shape of his body has no effect on the hourglass outline of the dress. The mermaid column of the skirt flows uninterrupted, black bands boned like armour against the neutrals of the Scandi hotel suite. The beaded neckline plunges down to the moth on his stomach just enough so the mirror shows a dark pattern on his skin instead of the figure of an animal. 

He pinches his bare lips and thinks about putting the lipstick on too, but he listens to the twinge in his lower back instead. 

He toes the dark blue heels off and pushes them aside, the stiletto points dipping into the plush hotel carpet, and lets the column skirt fall down, the hem settling into a misshapen circle around him. 

The shoulder straps look slightly thicker now under the halogen lights, less like glossy wires meant to hold him taut and string the swallows up against his chest. 

With his hair up in a sleek bun, and the living room of the suite and prosperous Oslo behind him, he looks like he’s just come back up after a posh do in the ballroom downstairs.

The dried sheen of sweat on his face and chest isn’t from running up and down the concert catwalk and singing all his parts plus the ones he’s been learning after Zayn left; it’s from dancing and too much champagne, Harry in the mirror says. 

He runs his hands along the exquisite boning, the structural lines of finely stitched rayon flowing down the long bandage skirt, holding together what’s been layered piece by piece.

His isn’t a dress he could’ve found within reach of Holmes Chapel except maybe at the high-end charity shops in Manchester. Harry used to go to them with Gemma, looking at leather belts and designer scarves with skulls on, fingering the silky skirts meant for bare legs. She tried on a dress like it once, the skirt like a fishtail swooshing as she twirled and laughed, but she picked a short one instead for her leavers’ ball. 

Harry carried his sister’s shopping in one hand as they walked the lanes home from the train. She said to him, “That dress was nice, but I’m not a princess, am I? And what’s a dress good for if I can’t dance and have fun in it?” His free hand glided along the low stone wall between them and the fields, the sun weak on his shoulders and the moss smooth to his fingertips.

When he saw Taylor in her Herve Leger gown at the VMAs two years ago, hair crimped and lips a vintage red, he thought she looked untouchable, not like how he remembered her to be when things had been good between them. It was the way she stood, and walked, and talked, the way she held herself and was held by the liquid column of her dress.

Harry had never put on clothes to be untouchable, but he’d never wanted to be, not until break ended in January and it felt like just one wrong whistle and a whole fucking avalanche would come down on all of them. 

He found his gown in Tokyo and had it put into its own suitcase, discreetly shuffled onto the tour, where it’s been moving around the world with them, just one among the many pieces in their extravagant baggage caravan.

He’d expected it to be wrinkled when he finally took it out, edgy and muddled after tonight’s concert, but it was perfect, the black rayon mix folding out smoothly with just one kink along the thigh-high slit in the back. 

He runs a hand over his hair and does a half turn, extending a leg back as if he’s about to twirl away. In the mirror, the slit is an uninterrupted line along his thin, hairy calf. 

“H?”

Harry looks up. There’s no one else in the mirror, but he knows who’s come into the room.

“I’m here, Niall.”

Niall walks into the frame, holding his phone and Harry’s spare key card. He looks showered and his hair like it’s got product in it.

Harry knows what he will say because he says it every time. 

“D’you want to be alone?” Niall asked, the night Harry answered at the door but didn’t quite open it. Harry let him slip in, his eyes quiet. “I like the back,” Niall told him from across the bed during the footie halftime, a white-socked foot poking into Harry’s thigh. Harry, lying on his stomach reading a trade magazine, still in the green cocktail chiffon, gave him a half-smile. 

“No, not really,” Harry replies when Niall has asked his question.

Niall is the only one in the group Harry can still let in like this. It wasn’t a happy thing at first, knowing that, but now he’s accepted it, seen enough to understand how most special things come by hard means. Niall won’t ever stop coming round no matter what Harry’s doing, no matter if he actually understands there are times when Harry has to be this other him or not: vulnerable and powerful in a different way from everyday Harry, a bloke to be looked at and wanted in ways that he’s not, not quite. 

Niall pockets what’s in his hand and steps up so they’re face to face. It’s like Niall’s brought the outside in with his eyes so blue. 

“Good show tonight.”

“A bit strange with the daylight.”

“And the empty seats up top,” Niall says, almost like a question, reaching out to touch him.

In Harry’s chest, it starts to thunder. Something’s different and the way Niall’s hands are gently rubbing up and down his arms is making Harry think Niall’s feeling a bit sorry for the person standing in front of him right now, and he shouldn’t. Harry won’t let him. 

“’S not the one she wore to the VMAs,” Harry tells him. Fashion doesn’t really exist for Niall, but he always knows what Harry means.

“Oh, it’s not?” he says. “It looked familiar, but so’s this great awful face o’ yours,” he adds, and comes in for a kiss. Just lightly at first, like he does sometimes when they’re pissed and busy with their own thoughts but still want to send each other off properly. Except they’ve never drunk much with Harry in one of his nice dresses before, and they’re not drinking now. 

Niall’s lips press deeper and Harry tilts his head and lets Niall lick in, his hands drawing in over Harry’s shoulders, brushing up his neck, and then his cheeks, the fingertips stroking and slipping as if the skin’s just as wet as his mouth. 

Niall’s kisses are unhurried, not like the times when they’ve been stuck in dozens of other hotel rooms, needing to get off and trusting only each other to get the job done. They’re even slower than the ones he gave Harry when they finally fucked proper last autumn. His jumper is soft against Harry’s skin and probably getting pills from the beading along the deep neckline of the dress.

“Turn,” Harry says, putting a hand on Niall’s back to pivot them so they’re in profile in the mirror and he can see how different they look together.

Niall does as he’s asked and goes back to kissing him, a gentle weight over the tautness of the dress binding Harry’s ribcage. And then he feels Niall’s hand on his chest, half over the bodice and half on his skin. “Can I? Want to touch your nip.”

“Go ahead. ‘M not wearing anything under there.”

“Idiot. I can see that,” Niall says, hand hidden under the dress, palming his tit and rubbing his nipple, fitting it tight between his fingers. The pulls of Niall’s hand magnifies the press of the bodice around Harry’s back and Harry feels his cock harden through the sting and the ache, rubbing against the thong that’s kept it all tucked away. 

“Suck me off, Niall,” Harry says to the Niall in the mirror. “Right here.”

Niall turns his head and looks as if he’s taking in the entirety of the reflection, one hand absently stroking Harry’s arm. “Yeah?” 

Harry nods. “Get a chair,” he continues. “Put it here, sit down, and suck me off. Let me watch.”

Niall comes back with one of the low wooden armchairs from the living room. He puts it down with one arm parallel to the mirror, steps away a moment, and then turns the chair so that its back is to the glass. 

“Front row tickets just for me then, Nialler,” Harry says, and immediately wants to take it back, but Niall sits, signing for him to come closer.

He pulls the dress up, one thick bandage at a time, until he knows he can spread his legs enough for Niall to reach him. It’s easy enough with the high slit. He can already feel the cool air against his bum. If there was anyone in the living room or balcony, that’s what they’d see: someone with an updo, in a gown that’s pulled up, showing long legs and a hard bum, standing in front of someone sat in a chair in jeans and suede boots.

Niall clears his throat and Harry knows he’s spotted the thong. 

“Thought you said you’re not wearing anything under here,” Niall says easily, coaxing one of Harry’s legs up with a callused hand and rolling the thong down, over his knee, over his foot, and then doing the same with the other bit of fabric that’s come along, placing it carefully with both hands into the half-cradle of his fingers. Harry can smell his own musk mingled with the tang of sweat from today and a nice soap from a hotel long ago. Asia, he thinks, when he put on things to not be angry.

“One foot up here,” Niall says, tapping the upholstered seat to his right. 

Harry’s legs spread under Niall’s hands, the high slit making most of the skirt just a big piece of heavy cloth they can sling over to one side, as if they’ve both done this before. Maybe they have in theory, what with all the taking off of dresses added up between them. Harry stretches back his right arm to hold up the material around and behind him, like a lopsided train that’s not doing enough to cover his bum.

Niall noses along the inside of his flexed thigh, stroking where his balls are pulling tight, and Harry looks up, sees the bright lights of Oslo breaking up what’s left of the sun, his flushed face, and the black dress rucked up in the mirror, the neckline rising and falling against his chest, like gates opening and closing over his lungs. 

When Niall brings him into his mouth, Harry braces himself with a hand on Niall’s shoulder and looks back down.

He can’t quite see over the folds of rayon, but he can feel Niall’s sweet tongue lapping at his foreskin, teasing the head of his cock. He does this for so long the saliva feels like slick when he mouths to suck deeper.

“’S amazing, Niall,” Harry says, his foot gripping the seat, because it’s true and because Niall likes it when he knows where he is.

Niall’s right hand grabs at the material bunched over Harry’s stomach, his left pumping low around Harry’s cock for what his mouth can’t take. Harry can feel his fingers searching until the tips are curled like staccatos against Harry’s body.

The way Niall’s put the chair in front of the mirror, it’s only the two of them who know Niall isn’t eating him out but sucking him off. If he keeps his eyes low enough, the pair in the mirror could be Niall with a woman, but he knows they’re not. There’s no reflection of the wet, hot suck around his cock, of the tickling against his left thigh where it meets his groin because Niall’s hair is styled flat tonight, the tips pushed to one side. And it is Harry – who’s got sweaty again along his neck and in the dips above his collarbone – that Niall’s with.

In between ratcheting breaths he asks, “Can I, inside your mouth, Niall?”

Niall’s hand moves to cover his and Harry shuts his eyes as he comes. 

It’s slow at first, like when you’re climbing in the dark up a pass you don’t know, and then fierce and terrifying when you realise you just didn’t recognise it before, and Niall’s hand stays through it all.

His spent cock finally slips out and he curls heavily into Niall, finding space in the nook between Niall and the arm of the chair.

When Niall gets up, Harry thinks of asking if he wants taking care of too, but he knows Niall will tell him what he needs and he can just sit here for a bit, sweat cooling on his skin.

He stirs when he hears Niall fiddling with the taps in the bathroom. It sounds like miles away, and then Niall is humming, coming back, closer and closer. 

Harry doesn’t know where the thong has got to. He gets up, carefully rolling down what’s bunched around his stomach so the skirt will go back over his legs, but Niall stops him and bends down to wipe a damp flannel across his groin and thighs in short, slow rubs. Harry wants to remind him it’s not a golf towel but he knows it’s not the time. 

“How about you?” Harry asks, touching Niall’s mussed hair.

“Meeting the other boys at that club everyone’s going on about,” Niall tells him, drawing up and letting Harry do the dress the way he wants it to be. “Thought I’d see if you’ve changed your mind ‘bout going out tonight.”

A part of him wants to have a laugh and be around people, but in the quiet time before bed he wants to feel the dress like a wall of black holding him in when he checks his texts, bends over suitcases looking for a spare hair tie, lies down to read, all of that, and stay soft against its press. 

“I haven’t,” he says.

Niall shrugs, the flannel folded in his hand. “You got a spare toothbrush in here?” he asks, heading for the bathroom.

“Yeah, but the toothpaste is too strong,” Harry replies. He lifts the banded skirt and follows Niall in, his feet warmed by the underfloor heating. “Here,” he says, reaching for his toiletry bag, “use this one.” 

“Ooh. Jasmine Mint.” Niall holds out the hotel toothbrush instead of taking the toothpaste so Harry uncaps the tube of Marvis and squeezes a little bit on. “Cheers, H,” Niall says, a pleased smile on his face as if it’s the nicest thing someone’s done for him today even though Harry’s sure that’s not true.

"You're welcome," Harry says, watching Niall fill up a tumbler with water.

"You gonna watch me brush too?" Niall says in the mirror. He lets out a small breathy chuckle and puts the brush to his perfect teeth.

Harry slips behind him, the black rayon of the dress pooling on the floor, engulfing the backs of Niall’s suede boots. He rests his forehead on Niall’s shoulder, sways along for a while with the careful brushing of someone who once lived a very public life in braces.

"I'm in for the night," he says, letting go.

"I'll come and find ya," Niall replies, head down. He spits into the sink, his shoulders a crest in the mirror.

  


~

  


**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I chose the setting after googling sunset in Oslo in June '15 and coming up with 11pm. If that's wrong, I hope it didn't throw anyone off too badly and please do let me know. You can also find me [on Tumblr](http://fromward.tumblr.com). Thanks for reading. <3


End file.
